


Pyre

by Missy



Category: Romeo And Juliet - Shakespeare
Genre: Alternate Universe - Zombie Apocalypse, Community: zombie_fic_athon, Gen, Resurrection, Zombie Apocalypse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-02
Updated: 2013-07-02
Packaged: 2017-12-16 21:31:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 536
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/866835
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Missy/pseuds/Missy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Juliet rises.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pyre

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Zombiefest 2013

Her eyes cracked open under a silky layer of meal worms, blinking their gooey strands away. To her feet she rose, stiffly, to Romeo’s sweet kiss.

No. Romeo lay beside her on his own bier, still and peaceful. It was some child who kisses her – a spawn of her lover’s kinsmen, who was dared by a cousin to sneak into the Capulet mausoleum, into the crypt of the virgin Juliet to peck her upon her pale and amazingly unspoilt lips. For generations, youths had done the same; it was the county test of manhood and had become a virtual Verona-wide institution in the centuries that had ensued. 

Thousands of young Veronans had escaped from Juliet’s bier with intact tongues and lips, but this young gentleman would not be so lucky. Frozen in horror by the sight of Juliet’s once-beautiful visage, he did not think to defend himself, could only stand still and wet himself in a display of utter terror.

She smiled at him then, smelling the sour-sweet odor of utter and complete mortification. Her eyes milk-doused and opaque as her teeth crunched through his bottom lip.

The rest of him was short work – faith, all bones and sinew at that age, and not even much of a fight for a woman with acid in her veins, raised from paradise by the indolent kiss of a blood relation to her once beloved. His blood ran down her throat and she thought that it tasted like sex and hot buttered brandy and every sweetmeat she had as a child.

*** 

When she staggered from the mausoleum, they saw it as a combined curse and blessing. Perhap hr miraculous rise from the eternal slumber of death was a call from God? 

They arrayed her faded titan hair with flowers, and bowed toward her rotting toes, asking her for absolution.

So she realized that they believed her to be God.

A quaint notion that passed when she ripped out the emperor’s throat over dinner.

There was a soliloquy of love, of faithful trueness, shouted from the audience. Somewhere a troubadour sang, and somewhere an angel cried, but Juliet saw nor felt love in it. They forced her to bathe twice in rosewater to rid herself of the deathly aroma of the place, but she found the stench of gore quite appealing

*** 

On the hundredth day, the last living human in Verona was eaten, screaming and squalling like a newborn babe. Juliet sat and stared at her bloody hands and wondered at what she had managed to wrought. 

But in the end the need driving her won out over self-recrimination, self-revulsion. She clambered upon a pale-eyed horse, tuberoses from her marriage bed still woven through her hair, and spurred the beast toward movement.

For she was hungry.

Eternally.

Its hooves creaked against the rich Italian earth as she turned toward the dusty path and sought the eternity, avoiding the hell of what will never be.

Behind her burned the city of Verona, where a fair scene turn’d sour, and where a maiden learned the power of the crust of blood. Her lips cracked into a smile.

She remembered her nurse’s long ago proclamation that Rome was heavenly this time of year.

**Author's Note:**

> This fanfiction uses character from **Romo and Juliet**. Characters are within public domain.


End file.
